Articles/Stories

The Extenzz Review

Anyone unfamiliar with the concept of shrinkage in natural hair is often surprised to see how long tight coils can be when stretched to their full length. That woman you see who appears to have short, ear-length hair, for example, could have tresses that reach to her collarbone and beyond when straightened or pulled taut.

While I enjoyed having length while wearing my hair straight, I didn’t always want to straighten whenever I desired to have longer hair. Luckily for me,
Extenzz
made it possible to lengthen my natural hair without much effort and without any chemical or heat treatments.

Extenzz helped stretch my hair, which typically reaches my chin when fully dry, to my shoulders and slightly beyond. Combined with my usual application of
Curl Keeper
, my hair after an application of
Extenzz
remained frizz control, maintained curl definition and showed off some impressive length that surprised my co-workers the next day at the office.

Here’s how I did it. I started with clean hair by washing with the
Treatment Shampoo
– a product I like because it strengthens my color-treated hair and leaves it feeling soft – and then conditioning as usual. After rinsing out the conditioner, I applied a combination of
Curl Keeper
and
Silk Leave-In Conditioner
to dripping wet hair to provide moisture before applying the product. I prefer to squeeze excess water out of my hair after a conditioner wash and not towel dry, as towel drying creates frizz when the terry cloth fibers rub against curly hair.

I then tried Extenzz a few different ways. One day, I smoothed it onto my strands, as I would with the leave-in and
Curl Keeper
. I put a quarter-sized dollop of
Extenzz
in my hands, rubbed my hands together and then smoothed the product onto my hair. I can usually cover my entire head with four such applications.

This alone provided great results, as I manually stretched my hair while applying the product. When soaking wet, my hair is probably chest-length; when it dried with
Extenzz
, it hung near my collarbone.

Not bad, I thought to myself.

The next day, I completed the same process – minus another shampoo – but used the root brush to distribute
Extenzz
down the length of each strand. With the root brush, I was able to loosen the curl even more and give my coils a different shape. If you don’t have a root brush, a fine tooth comb can provide a similar result.

As my hair dried, the shrinkage was even less than I would usually experience. My curls remained hanging below my shoulders, as they did minutes after finishing the washing and conditioning process.